Recent revelations in The Oregonian that Cylvia Hayes, Gov. John Kitzhaber's girlfriend, was involved in yet more questionable activities should not surprise anyone. It is not a big step from immigration fraud to conspiracy to produce illegal drugs to charging taxpayers $41 for a breakfast while promoting climate hysteria. I hope that she got three strips of bacon with the $41 breakfast!

Outrageous expenditures, outrageous arrogance, and outrageous climate nonsense are surely par for the course in a state that has long suffered from one party rule. As a former Chicagoan, I know how to spell "c-o-r-r-u-p-t-i-o-n."

However, I'm no attorney. Perhaps it is OK to bill taxpayers for an expensive breakfast if Hayes is saving the planet from "global warming." But surely the state of Oregon hires experts to deal with its problems, whether they be scientific, engineering or medical. Since Hayes has no scientific or engineering qualifications, what qualifications does she have — beyond a cozy relationship with Kitzhaber? Hayes is clearly an expert at milking the cash cow of environmentalism.

My expertise lies in science, which was once an occupation well separate from politics and religion. Unfortunately, too many scientists realize that they do not have to take a vow of poverty to practice the profession. All they have to do is work on something that seems relevant and urgent. How about climate hysteria? If they sign on to the apocalypse, they can go back to studying the effects of climate change on tube worms living off the Oregon Coast. Never mind that our portion of the Pacific Ocean cooled after 1999; they can study global warming in reverse and need never address the irony of that.

Meantime, you can be sure that Kitzhaber and Hayes will be huge backers of the "don't ask questions" portion of the climate scam, because strict scientific accountability would toast them all. The many objections from real scientists will be countered with fictitious claims of "consensus." (Should that, too, be questioned — based on studies that show widely divergent scientific opinions — the political formula calls for stonewalling.) Never mind that science proceeds from openly discussed logic and evidence. The scientifically illiterate will not understand and can be easily fooled with unsupportable claims that each succeeding year is the "warmest ever."

Kitzhaber and Hayes know that there will be no calls for investigations from a complicit media. The media have never figured out the "consensus" larceny, let alone the lack of global warming for more than 16 years, the well-known cyclical nature of Arctic warming, and the lack of any measured Antarctic warming since high quality satellite measurements began. Even the monumental failure of the billion dollar climate models and the monumental success of polar bears are being systematically ignored. Propaganda reigns supreme.

While Hayes has no scientific expertise, Kitzhaber, as a physician, does. He knows that it is essential to have professional training in a field to practice it. He knows that there have been many hoaxes in medicine, where charlatans have promoted cures for whatever ails us and fought those who dared to question them. He knows that "efficacy" is an essential requirement for all proposed treatments. Yet Kitzhaber allows the amateur scientists he employs to run wild.

No one should be offering professional advice without professional training. As both a scientist and a governor, Kitzhaber should protect the public from charlatans. He should also protect the public treasury from those who are raiding it. Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is a psychosomatic illness that calls for a few cheap sugar pills, not payouts to pals pushing "Kitzhaber's Climate Cures."

This climate of corruption is causing substantial harm. Misdiagnosing a patient in order to prescribe outrageously expensive and unnecessary treatments (like "low-carbon" fuels or carbon taxes) and then thwarting patient access to professional second opinions is, at best, unethical.

This should be Oregon, not Chicago without snow.

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Gordon J. Fulks lives in Corbett and can be reached at gordonfulks@hotmail.com. He holds a doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago, Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research.